The city died today
mainIt’s the centenary of Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt. Premiered in Cologne on December 4, 1920, it became the most performed opera in Vienna between 1920 and 1938.
Cologne Opera is streaming it live tonight:
Mind that chair.
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The video turns the music into film music of the fourties….. while the score is better than that.
Yes, envy is a bad thing.
The city also died in Hamburg, not just in Cologne. The opera was premiered in two cities on the same day.
That’s right, such was the expectation and wrangling for the rights.
That’s right. in Cologne, the conductor was Otto Klemperer (his wife Johanna was Marie/Marietta) and in Hamburg, the conductor was Egon Pollak. Both premieres on December 4th 1920.
Looking forward to watching Korngold s flamboyant noirpsychomasterpiece staged by Tatjana Gürbaca!
Korngold’s opera is entitled Die TOTE Stadt, not Die TODE Stadt. Please would you correct the title of the post, thank you.
For those who may wish to learn about its composition and performance history, I have published an extended essay today, to mark this important centenary which, as well as including rare photos from my archive also presents a unique and rare recording of Korngold improvising on the piano, themes from his score.
Here’s the weblink:-
I hope many on this list may enjoy this centenary tribute.
~BRENDAN CARROLL
https://www.momh.org.uk/exhibitions-detail.php?cat_id=5&prod_id=391&iotm=1
Thank you, Brendan!
Believe me you are most welcome!
Why do I always want to throw up when I see your name?
It’s a fantastic opera — simple as that.
It sure is, and scandalously not in the repertoire of American opera companies. Seeing as Korngold is buried just a stone’s throw from where the Los Angeles opera puts on shows, they should take it up.
Totally agreed, TVfA!
I had a chance to see the opera some years ago in Chemnitz (Saxony). Pure magic. A mixture of Sigmund Freud and fairy tale. Italien verismo meets Germany, only better. Perhaps I’m hopeless, but “Glück, das mir verblieb” is (for me) one of the most beautiful melodies of 20th century opera. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2berfUCRe8&ab_channel=liederoperagreats Drives me to tears every time. Sorry…
And here is another out of this world performance, this time Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. The other rendition was by Joseph Schmidt – is there any other aria that is routinely sung *both* by tenors and sopranos in opera history? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdSH__JeWrk&ab_channel=liederoperagreats
Amen to that. Hard to believe that the Met has done it only once, back in 1921
For me one of the greatest opera’s ever. Adore it.
My discography of a few selected recordings (in Dutch)
https://basiaconfuoco.com/2019/01/07/die-tote-stadt-discografie-deel-1/
And about the composer and the opera (in English)
https://basiaconfuoco.com/2018/12/20/worshipped-ignored-forgotten-about-erich-wolfgang-korngold-and-die-tote-stadt/
Memories, and a reminder of the recordings by Lotte Lehmann, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and Richard Tauber of excerpts and Marietta’s “Lied”. Brendan Carroll’s interesting post reminds me that there is a historical CD compilation of historic recordings, including some by Korngold himsel, and several famous singers. His essay is timely
A word too for Korngold’s violin concerto, whose advocates include Mutter and Jascha Heifetz.and film scores.
The 2nd picture shows Kaufmann’s indignation about a too low intonation of the soprano during rehearsel.
It was performed some twenty years ago at De Opera voor Vlaanderen in Antwerp as one of the three Flemish opera’s (the others being Puccini’s Edgar and Lohengrin which plays in Antwerp at the time when the duchy of Brabant -now part of modern Flanders- was as independant as the county of Flanders.
I cannot help it but I was not impressed. I always thought Korngold should have followed Lehar and Kalman after his Polykrates and Violantha. I could easily imagine the aria’s of Paul and Fritz-Pierrot sung in a tragic operetta. As a young man my father played and sang in an amateur operetta performance of Korngold’s Das Lied der Liebe (with themes of Strauss) and he said the whole score was superb as one can judge from a few Tauber recordings. Incidentally as a child I often accompanied my parents to Brugge before mass tourism arrived. One could easily update a performance from the end of the 19th century to the fifties. The city was indeed beautiful, silent, somewhat dirty and very poor.
There’s some gorgeous music in this opera! Undervalued but the lead roles are quite a sing! Cologne has Burkhard Fritz, an erstwhile Siegfriend as Paul.
There were technical problems with last night’s stream – ticket holders (yes it was a ‘pay what you wish’ stream!) have access to a replay on demand. I believe Oper Koln is repeating the stream on the nights the other performances would have taken place – as they are for ‘Written on Skin’ conducted by Francois-Xavier Roth.